Awesome Twitter Article – Must read!

October 25, 2009

In the span of one up-and-down week, Twitter lost one of their most influential teen Twitterers in Miley Cyrus, and then almost immediately found new life in the tween market with the launch of the Twilight Twitter account. It may sound silly, but these 140 character pop culture dramas do matter to Twitter, because their US traffic is flat, and that’s a problem.

At the Web 2.0 Summit earlier this week Twitter’s Co-Founder and CEO, Evan Williams, openly admitted that traffic has stalled in the US. He then went on to say that new features should help solve the problem. Likely not coincidentally, the very next day Twitter announced search deals with both Bing and Google. Those deals, coupled with the new Twitter Lists, and the roll out of location-aware tweets, make up what we deem to be Twitter’s trifecta traffic strategy. And we think it will work; here’s why.

1. Search

Both Bing and Google have tapped Twitter to serve up real-time tweets as a part of search results pages. Bing’s product is already live, and while it’s a separate web page from the Bing.com homepage, it’s a really impressive web and Twitter search mashup, with constantly refreshing tweets.

Soon Google too will include tweets as a part of the search experience, but their plan is to include tweets within the standard Google search experience. According to their blog post on the news, “the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.”

Twitter’s inclusion in search results is likely to be the biggest driver of new and repeat traffic, period. Right now Twitter search tools are incredibly valuable, but they don’t expose mainstream audiences to Twitter. Google is the epitome of mainstream. It’s the first place most online users go when they want to find something on the web, it’s where they go to find products and breaking news stories, and now this mainstream audience will be exposed to real-time tweets matching their queries, which means a likely flood of new traffic and users for Twitter.

Thus far, Twitter would encourage new user participation via a hand picked list of recommended Twitterers (often referred to as the Suggested User List or SUL). Now, however, Twitter is ready to kill the SUL and provide something of even greater value: user-curated Twitter Lists.

As we’ve detailed before, Twitter Lists, which are live for some users, enable users to create and name their own curated lists of Twitterers. Your lists are public by default, which means that anyone can check out who you’ve added to your topical lists, and the feature also makes it easy to see which lists you’ve been added to by other Twitter users. As our Editor in Chief, Adam Ostrow wrote, “This is essentially taking the whole concept of “Follow Friday” and building a killer feature around it.”

As any addicted Twitterer knows, the key to Twitter becoming an integral part of your online life is reaching a threshold where you’re consuming interesting tweets and getting responses from others who read your 140 character opinions. Without that push and pull exchange, Twitter is absolutely meaningless.

That’s why Twitter Lists will prove to be the key engagement tool. Lists will ensure that new users can immediately find other Twitterers who appeal to their tastes. Right now, seasoned Twitter users can create communities of their own, so engagement isn’t a problem, but Lists will brings the crafted community element to new users who may be initially trepidatious or confused about the point of Twitter.

3. Location Aware Tweets

Twitter has already started the application implementation process for attaching latitude and longitude to tweets, and has deployed the feature internally for testing. Ultimately, when it’s rolled out to the entire Twittersphere, all tweets from those who have opted-in will be location-aware. This could be huge for Twitter’s user retention issues, and also help with tackling traffic plateaus.

If you’re using a GPS-enabled phone or browser-plugin, you can already send and receive location-aware tweets through third-party apps and leverage an around-me function to see who’s tweeting nearby. Once the lat/long features become ubiquitous, however, the value of location-aware tweets increases exponentially. The next time you’re in a new city and you launch Twitter, you could potentially see tweets from people in the same building, on the same block, or dining at the same restaurant, let alone just in the same city.

With the right application or filter, location-aware tweets could be the secret sauce that helps brand new users really understand what Twitter is about and make it relevant to their offline lives. Just knowing there are thousands of Twitterers within a few mile radius of your present location may not mean anything, but being able to have a conversation on Twitter with someone who’s at the same movie as you could mean the difference between being a Twitter lover or a Twitter quitter.